The 2020 Super Bowl opponents are now set. The first-seeded San Francisco 49ers have beaten the second-seeded Green Bay Packers for the NFC Championship, while the second-seeded Kansas City Chiefs beat the sixth-seeded Tennessee Titans for the AFC Championship.
These teams will meet in two weeks, at Rock Hard Stadium, in Miami Gardens, Florida, at Super Bowl 54, on February the 2nd.
With the NFL playoffs essentially over, but for one final game, it’s a good time to harken back to another playoff game—this one ten years ago, during the 2010 NFC Wild Card game, between the Seattle Seahawks and the Super Bowl-defending New Orleans Saints.
One play that occurred on this day forever marries one player, Marshawn Lynch, with his nickname: Beast Mode. That play is monumental for a number of reasons:
· It has a nickname of its own (the Beast Quake).
· It has its own Wikipedia page.
· The resulting celebration at Qwest Field (now Century Link Field)—in Seattle, Washington—actually registered on a nearby seismograph.
· Lynch broke nine tackles to get into the end zone.
· The win that resulted from the play enabled the Seahawks to become the first team in NFL history with a losing record to win a playoff game and to dethrone a defending Super Bowl champion.
Wait! you say. What does this have to do with me? I’m struggling to walk this Christian walk. I don’t need to know about some NFL running back!
Watch the play, here, and I’ll get back with you. Have you seen it? Did you see what I saw?
I saw utter, absolute relentlessness. I saw a man who would let no one, no thing, get in his way as he struggled toward his goal—that of simply carrying an inflated one-pound leather ball 68 yards, over a wide white line drawn on a green field.
In that run, I saw an example of what our Christian walk ought to look like: one full of determination; one that would let no opponent get in the way; one that would throw off an opponent, if necessary, in order to accomplish that which he had set out to do.
As Christians, what have we set out to do? Oh, quite a few things. For example:
· Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.
· Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.
· Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God:
· Did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but
· Emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
These are just a few goals that we have as Christians, according to Philippians, Chapter 2. In the following chapter, Paul talks about pressing on, as the running back had pressed on. He says:
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul, like Lynch, had a goal. In his case, it was the prize of the upward call of God.
Paul’s prize ought to be our prize, as well. We ought to be heading toward the upward call.
Our goal needs to be one that empties us of our selfish conceits and enables us to press on toward holiness. Our call enables us to fulfill the great commission and evangelize the lost.
It is the call of winning the prize of ultimately being with our Lord and Savior when once our goal is ultimately met in Him, when we shed every earthly encumbrance that might try and hold us back, even as we see Marshawn Lynch shedding would-be tacklers.
When Lynch completed his run, what did we see? We saw him surrounded by a cloud of witnesses—those who ran with him and those who had cheered him on. The writer of Hebrews says:
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
When you watch the Super Bowl, recall Lynch, recall his Beast Mode performance. With every run you watch, recall that with all the determination you may see in the runner, it’s only an example—a microcosm—of our walk with Jesus.
Our goal is to create a seismic shift in the world around us, as Lynch had done, and influence the world around us for the Gospel, for the team around us, and ultimately for our Mighty Team Captain who died for us to make this race, this personal Super Bowl run of ours, possible.
Run in such a way that lets no opponent get in the way. Fun full of determination, throwing off every opponent, pleasing your team captain at every turn.
—Kevin Hutchins
